At first glance, the question seems ludicrous, even crazy. But bear with me and I will present good evidence that it may not be so ludicrous or crazy after all. Indeed, that single stark and simple question is not enough. I want to go further and ask:

Is Mikita Brottman a serial killer with a vile white-supremacist agenda?

Now the question may seem to some even ludicrouser. How on Gaia could Mikita Brottman be a serial killer, let alone a serial killer with a vile white-supremacist agenda? This mild-mannered literary scholar and yoga-enthusiast is a passionate member of the progressive community. She has a PhD in EngLit and another PhD in psychoanalysis. She is a committed reader of the Guardian and has been for decades. She was a core contributor to Cleaner, Kinder, Caringer: Women’s Wisdom for a Wounded World (2008). She has signalled her core commitment to progressive values in a thousand ways in a thousand venues.

Indeed she has. But is “signalled” not the operative word? I would suggest that Brottman, like countless other beneficiaries of white privilege, is an expert at camouflaging herself as progressive while making no real contribution to advancing the progressive agenda. For example, although Brottman has undoubtedly enjoyed white privilege all her life, she has never acknowledged this glaring fact, let alone sought to atone for it. And when she is called out for her white privilege, she resorts to the most disingenuous and transparent tactics of evasion. She has claimed in one interview: “I do not identify as ‘white’ – I identify as Freudian.”

What nonsense! As though Sigmund Freud is not a paradigmatic example of a Dead White European Male! Furthermore, Freud taught us to probe beneath the surface. If what is in the depths were invariably the same as what is on the surface, there would be no need to probe beneath the surface. Q.E.D. We should therefore be very suspicious of Brottman’s progressive veneer and of her claim “not [to] identify as ‘white’.” And that is even before we consider another core data-quantum: her move to the Black-majority city of Baltimore. What was she up to? Indeed, what is she up to? I would suggest that this recent headline provides us with a clue:

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore could surpass New York City in homicides this year. The Baltimore Sun reports that for the first time Baltimore, with a population of less than 620,000, could record more murders in a single year than New York, which has a population of 8.5 million. As of Sept. 3, Baltimore has recorded 238 homicides, while New York City has seen 182 murders.

How on Gaia is it possible that Baltimore, with a population of less than a million, could ever record more murders than New York, with a population of over eight million? Well, vile white racists and white supremacists have an easy answer to that core question. They claim that it is the so-called “Ferguson Effect”, in which protests by the progressive organization Black Lives Matter (BLM) cause the de-policing of vulnerable districts in various American cities. Black-on-Black homicide rates then rise sharply and shockingly – according to the vile white racists and white supremacists.

I have a different and much more plausible theory: that the so-called “Ferguson Effect” is real, but caused not by Blacks homiciding other members of their Community, rather by homicidal white racists seeking to make BLM look bad. And how, you might quite reasonably ask, are homicidal white racists able to operate in vulnerable Black districts without being detected? I will let TransVisceral Books answer that question:

Baltimore Booty: An Anglo Academic Goes Undercover in Da Ghetto

Mikita Brottman’s über-controversial memoir of how she has regularly used skin-dye, wigs and prosthetic buttocks to enter and share the life of one of America’s most vulnerable Black communities. – TransVisceral publicity for Baltimore Booty (2016)

There you have it. On her own admission, Brottman has regularly operated “undercover” in Baltimore’s Black Community whilst wearing prosthetic buttocks in which it would be very easy to conceal lethal weaponry. Perhaps she carries a powerful handgun in the right cheek of her prosthetic buttocks and additional ammunition in the left cheek. Or vice versa. It is impossible to be sure. At this moment in time, we can only speculate as to the precise details of Brottman’s blood-soaked work on behalf of the white supremacist cause.

Nor am I, of course, seeking to suggest that Brottman could be solely responsible for the disturbingly anomalous increase in the Baltimore homicide rate. If my theory is correct, she would be merely one amongst a number of white racists operating in the Black Community while wearing similar disguises. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible that she is the deadliest and most dedicated member of the right-wing death-squad.

And why should she have confined her atrocious attentions to Baltimore? It could very well be the case that this so-called “Anglo Academic” has been at work in other cities subject to the so-called “Ferguson Effect”, such as Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee. What can we conclude? It’s simple: Racism Never Sleeps. Nor must anti-racism. And I have only one thing left to say:

Stop.

The.

Brott.

*Simul-scribe of seminal snuff-study Killing for Culture: A Dysmorphic Duo of Death’n’Decomposition-Dedicated Deviants Called Dave Sniff Out the Slimiest Secrets of Snuff’n’Stuff (Visceral Visions 2016).

June 2015. Anglo-American academic Mikita Brottman sets off in her eco-friendly Honda Hopi to the Jessup Correctional Facility on the outskirts of Baltimore. It will be her first day running a yoga club for prisoners at the notorious maximum-security jail — and her hopes are high. For the next eight months those hopes seem to be fully realized. That first session goes very well and those succeeding it go even better. Dozens of new prisoners are soon clamoring to join the club.

Then Mikita introduces her by now tight-knit group of eager students to a new asana – a posture she has invented herself with just them in mind…

The following day her yoga club is abruptly canceled by the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (MDPSCS). Mikita reaches out in an increasingly bewildered and desperate attempt to uncover why the authorities have taken this harsh and completely unexpected step, cutting her off from all contact with prisoners with whom she has bonded deeply and whose personalities and psychology she has been observing with an incisive but compassionate eye. As she writes in chapter four:

The MDPSCS at first refused to return my calls or answer any of my letters and emails, but I finally managed to get an “unofficial” response from one of the prison-guards with whom I had worked, and with whom – so I thought – I had forged a mutually respectful and considerate professional relationship. I had to read his email several times before its meaning fully sank in, so disconnected, incoherent and (frankly) illogical did it seem to my disbelieving gaze. I quote here an extract: “Your so-called club has killed two prisoners and left three others paralyzed for life. You can count yourself lucky that the Department is not suing your pasty-white posterior to Alaska and back. And you have the effrontery to ask why the club has been canceled? Please, Dr Brottman: give me a break!”

I was deeply disturbed by the tone and dismissiveness of this communication. Yes, there was a grain of truth in its assertions: the new asana had not gone as well as I might have liked. And yes, five members of the club did break their necks, of whom two died on the spot and three were, in the email’s cold and clinical phraseology, “left paralyzed for life.” But was this any reason to cancel a club that had been fatality-free on no fewer than forty-six previous occasions? To my mind, it was not. I continued to probe for the true reason behind the MDPSCS’s abrupt and shocking decision. (chapter 4, “Orwell’s Shadow”, pg. 124)

Her efforts are unavailing – but worse is to come for the mild-mannered literary scholar and yoga-enthusiast. As the US presidential campaign begins and the appalling rhetoric of Donald Trump incites the most reprehensible elements of so-called white America, Mikita finds herself adopted as an “alt-right icon” by vile racists who believe that the unfortunate events at that final session of her yoga-club were no accident. She quotes a typical email: “Way to go, girl! You should get a Congressional Medal for smuggling yourself into the jail and tricking all them dumb n*****s into trusting you like that! 88!”

Needless to say, these unjust, unfair and totally unfounded insinuations are an additional and almost unbearable burden for Mikita to carry. And be in no doubt: The Maximum Security Yoga Club is certainly a tale of trauma and tragedy. But it is ultimately one also of hope, as Mikita finds a chink of light amid the darkness by adopting a false name and starting a Tantric aromatherapy-and-origami club at a maximum-security psychiatric facility (which she leaves unnamed for obvious reasons).

Combining cutting-edge psychoanalysis with deeply personal memoir, The Maximum Security Yoga Club will take you on a roller-coaster ride of extreme emotion and edgy insight as it interrogates a seething underbelly of obstreperous obstructionism right at the heart of Maryland officialdom.

STOP-PRESS A TransVisceral Books press-release brings the unhappy news that the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has followed tiny clues in The Maximum Security Yoga Club and unmasked the false identity Mikita used to gain access to the Hyman T. Rubinstein Ultra-Max Mental Hospital. Her Tantric aromatherapy-and-origami club there has been canceled and she is now threatened with prosecution for impersonation, fraud and misuse of federal facilities. Please see the TransVisceral website for further details of this devastating new development.